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We'll kick off the week with a personal note: this weekend, I'll be one of the guests on Ed Robertson's terrific TV Confidential radio show. We'll be talking about classic TV, of course, as well as my...
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This week in TV Guide: February 19, 1954
We must be born with some kind of a nostalgia gene as part of our DNA. Why else would we be talking about what television was like "back in the day" from the perspective of 1954? I mean, it isn't as if...
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What's on TV? Wednesday, February 24, 1954
This is only the eighth-oldest TV Guide in the collection at the time of writing, but today's programs include something we haven't seen before: a listing for "Test Pattern." It wasn't unusual for the...
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"I swear you'll never see anything like this ever again!"
It was 41 years ago on Monday, the Miracle on Ice. Doesn't seem possible it was that long ago, does it? I'm sure most of you know what I'm talking about, the team of plucky college kids that bested the...
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Around the dial
I'm not going to be coy about it; I'm starting off this week with parts oneand twoof my appearance with Ed Robertson on his TV Confidential program. We talk about my book The Electronic Mirror and some...
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This week in TV Guide: March 2, 1968
It is, indeed, a week of big specials, and I must confess that I love these editions, not just because they make my job a whole lot easier (although they do), but because they bring an excitement, a...
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What's on TV? Friday, March 8, 1968
It's interesting to reflect on how many daytime game shows have had simultaneous network primetime runs over the years. Today, we see the nighttime version of The Hollywood Squares in its eight-month...
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Friday Flashback: Twinkles
It doesn't happen often, but this week's classic TV blogosphere was pretty empty, so I thought I'd carry thinks over until next week. Instead, I decided to pick up whatever was near me, and write about...
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This week in TV Guide: March 8, 1980
And you thought that your TV set was only good for watching TV shows. Silly you! This week Tom Zito takes a look, 1980s-style, at how a television can work with a home computer to do a whole variety of...
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What's on TV: Saturday, March 8, 1980
This is one of those days that reminds me how problematic television in 1980s is. Now, I don't want to step on anyone's toes (and if you saw the size of my shoes, you wouldn't want me to, either), but...
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The Descent into Hell: "The Obsolete Man" (1961)
What makes Romney Wordsworth, the hero of "The Obsolete Man" stand out from the heroes of 1984 and Darkness at Noon is, I think, his humanity. Those two stories are very much contests of ideas and...
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Around the dial
Last week, as you may recall, a dearth of new posts from the classic TV blogosphere resulted in an encore presentation of a particularly lame story about the cartoon mascot of a kids' breakfast cereal....
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This week in TV Guide: March 12, 1954
This week is kind of a mixed bag here at Retro TV Guide Headquarters, as we like to call it. (Well, OK, it's only me that calls it that, and just now is the first time I've ever done so, but let's...
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What's on TV? Wednesday, March 17, 1954
One of the more remarkable women in the history of television—one of the most remarkable people, really—makes multiple appearances in today's listing. Lee Phillip began on WBBM in 1952 with a 15-minute...
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What I've been watching: February, 2021
Shows I’ve Watched:Shows I’ve Found:The Roaring 20sT.H.E CatChina: The Roots of MadnessThe Lone WolfI'm now three-deep in the world of the Warner Bros. detective series of the late 1950s and early...
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What's on TV? Friday, March 29, 1968
It's true that if you look hard enough, you casn almost always find something to write about. Today, for example, the daytime run of ABC's The Fugitive comes to an end with, fittingly enough, the final...
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Around the dial
There are certain questions in life that are simply unanswerable. When did time begin? What is the true value of pi? Will the Chicago Bears ever find a quarterback? To those questions can now be added...
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This week in TV Guide: March 23, 1968
It turns out that today's moviemakers didn't invent the superhero universe after all. Fifty years before Marvel and DC came to dominate the big screen (and increasingly the small one as well), their...
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